


At The Shores Of Acheron

by Vayentha



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Angst, Death, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, SHEITH - Freeform, acheron - Freeform, i think it is???? kinda?????/, is this considered angst???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-18 01:27:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16107917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vayentha/pseuds/Vayentha
Summary: Shiro ends up on the shores of an unfamiliar river, without knowing how he got there, and without a way to leave this place





	At The Shores Of Acheron

**Author's Note:**

> So, a bit of a background needed for those who aren't familiar with Greek mythology. According to it, Acheron, a river in Greece, was the passage to the underworld, the kingdom of Hades. Charon, or peramataris (it means the driver of a boat used as a ferry), was a Greek deity that carried the dead across Acheron. In exchange, the dead gave him a golden coin each. That's why when someone died their relatives put a golden coin in their mouth, so they could give it to Charon and reach the underworld. If someone didn't have a coin, they'd wander on the shores of Acheron. 
> 
> I was inspired to write this fanfic by this [poem](http://www.stixoi.info/stixoi.php?info=Lyrics&act=details&song_id=64541) that was made into [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0DFE36TRb4). At the end is the Very Bad™ translation I did of the poem.
> 
> Excuse any mistakes, it's unbetaed and I wrote it while I had a fever

Shiro was walking. He didn’t know how long it had been since he took the first step. He didn’t know where he was, or how he’d gotten there. He was next to a river. A seemingly endless river. No matter how far he moved, everything seemed to be the same. He felt like he was walking in circles, although his path was straight. It hadn’t been five minutes since he’d arrived there, but it had been centuries. 

The river was calm and emitted a peculiar aura, like it was inviting him, but some unknown force forbade him from even so much as touching the water. The colours of this place somehow seemed both vivid and dim. It was like a once bright photograph that had faded with time. Everything was oddly quiet; no bird sang, and no tree rustled. The only sound was that of his footsteps on the smooth gravel. 

He remembered being carried there by a man. He had short, blond hair, and was dressed in a very strange way, in what seemed to be a simple piece of white cloth wrapped around him. He had been flying, holding Shiro with his right hand, and in the other he held a wooden staff with two engraved snakes wrapped around it. He’d left him there and spoken in a language Shiro didn’t understand, and then shook his head and left. 

He thought of going into the woods or climbing on the rocks, but he felt like some invisible force kept him on this path. Not too near to the water, not too close to the forest. Right in between them. 

He tried to think. Where was he before? He remembered a vague image, like a dream. He was looking at the stars. Suddenly the image started moving, becoming clearer and more coherent. He was piloting a spaceship. And he was falling. That’s right. They were trying the new hybrids when the Galra had attacked. Sam had ordered him to return. But there was no time, he knew it very well. The Galra shot at the base, just as the particle barrier was being generated. It would hit them, destroy a big part of it and kill hundreds, maybe thousands of people, unless he did something. So he did. 

He maneuvered as fast as he could, and got between the blast and the base. The laser hit him on full force. The few seconds between the moment he was hit and when he passed out seemed like eons to him. Everything was on slow motion and he could hear the voices from the ground even through the heavy beating of his own heart. 

He was at the base. So how did he get here? Wherever here was. 

He didn’t have time to think about it. In the unearthly silence, he heard a pair of footsteps and a mumbling. He looked around and spotted a middle-aged man, wearing filthy rags, walking towards him. The man was babbling. It mustn’t have been any language. Shiro stood and waited, but the man didn’t seem to notice him. He waited until the man had disappeared to start walking again. 

As he kept going, he heard splashing and ran towards the source of the sound. There, in the shore of the river, was a big wooden boat, and on it stood a grim old man. He had long white hair and a beard, and a deep red cloth was wrapped around his skeletal body. When he saw Shiro, he looked at him gravely. He was holding a ferryman's pole with his right hand. He held out his right hand. 

“Aπόδος τὰ πορθμεῖα”. 

“Wh- what?” 

The man sighed. “Hand me the fare”. 

Shiro looked at him baffled. “What fare? What for?”. 

He sighed again, and let his left hand fall by his side. “The fare so I can carry you”. 

“I don’t understand. Where am I?” 

“Acheron. You’re dead, boy”. 

Shiro felt his blood freeze in his veins. It made sense. How could he survive a blast like that, after all? He’s just a human. 

“Do you have the fare or not”. 

“I- No. I don’t”. 

The man hit the pole on the boat. “Then you stay here”. 

Shiro kept looking at him, unable to lift his gaze from his grey eyes. He was dead. The others... He didn’t even know if they had survived. Hopefully they had. That’d be the most reasonable scenario. If they were dead they’d be here with him. 

“Go,” he heard the man’s voice once again. 

He started walking, but stopped shortly. Where was he walking to, exactly? Where would he go? Would he become like the man he met before, walking around, mumbling nonsense? He sat on a rock and massaged his temples. He couldn’t do anything, so he sat, and observed. 

The first group came after a while. The older people were walking in the front, leading, and the younger behind them, all crying and wailing. They all had something gold in their mouths. As they approached the man in the boat, they pulled it out and gave it to him. A coin. A golden one. 

The man held out his hand and helped each of them get on the boat. Most were crying. Almost half of them didn’t fit. Some fell into the water and held on the sides of the boat as the man started paddling. 

The same scene repeated countless times before Shiro decided to keep walking to the direction the boat sailed towards. He’d probably be there for the rest of eternity and it didn’t hurt to try and get somewhere. He walked and walked, and it seemed like days had passed when he saw the boat. It was at the shore, and the old man was standing on it, holding the pole as he always was. He stood there, looking at him in disbelief. He didn’t turn anywhere, but he’d ended up there again. He started running, so focused at looking forward that he missed the boatman shaking his head in disappointment. He ran, without stopping for a moment, but he still ended up in the same place. He ran again, and again, and again, but he always came back there. 

Frustrated, he looked at the forest. If he couldn’t leave by following the river, he would get away from it. He strode to where the trees started, but just as he got there, he stopped. He tried to walk forward, but he felt like he paralyzed. 

He ended up walking next to the river, thinking about those who had left behind, wondering how the war was going. Whenever he would pass by the boatman, he nodded in in greeting. Sometime he sat on the rock by him. He had tried to talk to him, but the man was completely uninterested. 

He was on one of his lazy phases when he saw another group of people approaching. As always, the old ones were leading, and the younger were following. As his gaze reached the back, his heart skipped a beat. There was a man dressed in formal black and purple, with an open cloak on his shoulders that matched his raven black hair. The jewels he wore were few but seemed heavy. The button that secured the cloak around his neck was the same shade of violet as his eyes. The man turned to look at the river and Shiro saw a big scar on the right side of his face that started at his jaw and ended beneath his eye. 

Shiro got up when they approached the boat enough so he could speak to them. 

“Where are you going, following the dead ones?” he asked the man. 

“I’m not dead,” he declared. His expression was tense and he had his gloved hands in tight fists. 

“What’s that gold in your mouth, then?”. 

“This? It’s a golden tooth. It's Galra tradition”. 

Shiro gasped and without second thought, he leaned forward and kissed him. He had so many questions, but they could wait for later. He hugged him and let the feeling of his cold lips consume him, until it became the only thing he could feel. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was very familiar. He’d missed this, he’d missed _him_. He felt a tongue at his lips and opened his mouth on instinct, but, instead of the warmth of the other man’s tongue, he felt something hard enter his mouth, and then he was pushed away. 

The man looked at the boatman. “Take him, he has the fare,” he said and shoved Shiro towards the boatman when he held his hand out. 

Shiro didn’t have time to react. As soon as he was on the boat, it moved away from the shore, and the only thing he could do was to scream Keith’s name and watch him stand on the shore he once stood.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the (very bad) translation of the poem that inspired me. It's called Το Φίλεμα (To Philema), meaning The Kiss 
> 
> The caravan of the dead is going down to Hades  
> The old ones are in the front, the others are behind them  
> And on the very back, a young girl, beautifully decorated  
> They had a golden coin between their teeth for the peramataris  
> To pass them to the other side, to Hades' darkness
> 
> And a young man comes and nears them  
> \- Where are you going, you dead, you deceased?  
> \- To the great canyon, to the great door  
> \- And where are you going, young girl, beautifully decorated?  
> \- I am not dead, I'm not deceased  
> \- And what's the gold between your lips?  
> \- This is not a coin, it's just a golden tooth
> 
> And the young man leans and kisses her, on her cold mouth  
> And she shoves the coin between his teeth
> 
>  
> 
> I have a [tumblr](https://quantum-state-of-sheith.tumblr.com/), come say hi!
> 
> Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
